


The Violence that Fills the Night

by Freakazoid524



Category: Thirteen Reasons Why - Jay Asher
Genre: Anger Management, Tony Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 06:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15213158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Freakazoid524/pseuds/Freakazoid524
Summary: He holds the violence in until he can’t, until the injustice of it all becomes too much to bear.They touched his sister.They fucking crossed a line and now he sees red.Hannah is dead, and his sister is crying, and his brothers are all harsh teeth and sturdy edges.The Padillas' take care of their own.





	The Violence that Fills the Night

**Author's Note:**

> Tony had to be my favorite character, so here's a little something to soothe my heart.

Tony Padilla was born to violence. He breathed it in, saw it every morning in the streets of his hometown and in place’s others called their own. It was bred in him, beat in him from an early age, life was not kind, nor easy by any means. That is not to say he likes violence. No one will ever say that Tony Padilla is an advocate for war, however that does not mean they are not afraid of his temper. Violence and anger go hand by hand, they twist and turn and bubble, like acid inside of him, smoldering and unflappable against the world. His anger is an unstoppable force, one not to be tampered with. Sometimes someone will say something, something so cold and malicious to those he calls his own and he just…blanks out, his mind goes somewhere else as the simmering rage usual kept cool boils over into reality, like a wild fire, burning everything in its path.

  
He’s tired.  
Tony Padilla, youngest son of the Padilla family, older brother to Maria Padilla, is the kind of exhausted that eats at one’s bones. It’s the kind of thing they do not like to discuss, but so often will his brothers glance towards him in worry. The Padilla’s are worriers. They worried for those they name their own, as well as those they share blood. They worry for their financial needs and the weather. They worry so much that others worry their hearts will burst.  
He sleeps in violence.  
There is fire in the streets, gunshots sound in the distance, sirens move to and for, all around him, the world screams out against the hands it has been given, it whines and bleeds for the atrocities of others. He closes his eyes and tries to sleep, but all he hears is someone crying in the distance, for justice, of the injustice. Violence screams out and into his pores, anger, hot and raw and sure lights in his chest, but all he can do is lay down in silence.  
Violence and justice often go hand in hand.   
It’s not how it’s supposed to be. Robert Kennedy once asked, “What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr’s cause has ever been stilled by an assassin’s bullet. No wrongs have ever been rights by riots and civil disorders.” And he knows that’s how it’s supposed to be. He reads, and he reads about people who win without violence, but over the whole violence has been the only way to win. Here on the streets, in the bed of night, with hundreds, thousands screaming out for someone, anyone to save them. He knows what he needs to do. George Orwell said, “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”  
Tony has never had a good night’s sleep. So that must mean he has to be one of those rough men.  
He holds the violence in until he can’t, until the injustice of it all becomes too much to bear.  
They touched his sister.  
They fucking crossed a line and now he sees red.  
Hannah is dead, and his sister is crying, and his brothers are all harsh teeth and sturdy edges.  
The Padillas' take care of their own.  
Clay is drinking with the jockeys.  
Hannah Baker killed herself.  
He found her.  
He has her tapes.  
He knows her story and the violence that came with it.  
His sister is alone and crying.  
Sometimes when there’s no justice, you have to make it for yourself.  
He sees red. He sees red and just lets it all out, lets it bleed out for miles and miles. This isn’t the first time and he knows somewhere deep and savage that it won’t be the last time he feels this good.  
He thinks of Hannah and Jessica and all the girls on his block just like them. He thinks of all the horrible, awful names people have called him for just holding another man’s hands, he thinks of all the people who are broken down by the sins of others, of Bryce and Tyler and men like them. He thinks of all the horrible things this world had to offer and how it spit on him.  
He cries at the violence. He screams until Mateo pulls him off, until Erick hauls him into his car, and Christian, Christian just stands there, eyes wide, hands shaking. The nature of this world has never agreed with him, but Tony thrives here, thrives and crumbles in the only world they care to understand. He falls apart, tears threatening to fall over and into this world, as Erick clings to him, silent and brooding as always, looking like an old man amid war. “Antonio,” he whispers solemnly, letting his head fall forward to meet Tony’s, “Pequeno lo que te ha pasado.” His breath whispers on Tony’s skin, like a ghost of the past, curling around his shivering form, and Tony clutches him tighter, threatening to break.  
The silence makes him calm.  
“ In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends,” Martin Luther King Jr.  
Hannah never said she was in pain. He knew of course. She would always go silent in a way that screamed for help, for someone to answer, but Tony avoided that silence like it was a burning building, because it reminded him of what exactly was wrong with himself. He ignored her, because he could not face himself and now she was dead.  
She was the kind of friend that knew how to sit in silence, knew just what you needed. She saw behind all the leather jackets and grease monkey hands. She would drag him to get manicures and on spa trips, just because she knew it would make them both feel better. She knew it would calm him, soothe his wounds if only for a couple hours at a time. She was the kind of friends that knew how to make someone laugh. And now. She was dead.  
Hannah Baker was just one casualty in a world on fire.  
One night it happened, like it always does, the truth comes out.  
He snaps.  
One night, he’s letting the sirens wash over him like always, drowning in a world gone made.  
Tonight, he gets out of bed.  
Tonight, he walks to the kitchen and opens the garage door.   
Tonight, he gets the metal bats his brothers use to play baseball on the fields two blocks over.  
Tonight, he opens the door and lets it click shut behind him.  
Tonight, he doesn’t come home.  
And he learns that that’s just the way the world works. You either stand idle or become another martyr for the world to either forget or use for their own gain.  
Hannah was used, her story plastered up for the world to see, fingers pointed at an underpaid and broken school system.  
His death with just be another in a million kids lost to gang on gang violence. They will not know he was never a part of a gang. They will never know he was just fed up, like everyone else on his block, who listened to sirens screaming in the night.  
They will never know his story.


End file.
